


133

by Veldeia



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s01e09 Into the Forest I Go, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-28 09:53:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13268961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veldeia/pseuds/Veldeia
Summary: They needed to have a very long conversation about all this. Hugh just had to make sure Paul made it through each and every one of those 133 jumps first.(Doctor Culber's thoughts during the jump sequence in Episode 9: Into the Forest I Go, and the aftermath that we never saw onscreen.)





	133

**Author's Note:**

> I loved this episode, but was thoroughly annoyed that we didn't get to see the immediate repercussions of the 133 jump sequence for Paul (and Hugh's reaction to it), so I had to try my hand at writing that bit of missing comfort to all the hurt. Here it is, just in time before the next episode airs.
> 
> Beta thanks to the awesome [Dap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dapperanachronism)!
> 
> (Sidenote to my Steve/Tony subscribers: worry not, I've not jumped ship—I'm just adding a new one to my fleet. Because these two sciencey space heroes are awesome, and I had to try my hand at writing them.)

### 0

Before this whole mess, Hugh had always liked visiting Engineering and witnessing Paul in his element. Most people didn't tend to see past Paul's snappish manners, and if Hugh had had to introduce them to the part of Paul he'd fallen in love with, he would've taken them to see Paul at work, trying to figure out the most recent mycological mystery he'd come up with. Of course, for every day when he'd found Paul fascinated and excited about his work, there was another when Hugh caught him glaring at a screen like it had just declared war on him. That was how science tended to work: in most cases, it was a love-hate relationship.

In all the years he'd known Paul, Hugh had never spotted him looking this anxious at work. Ever since he'd gone and injected himself with the tardigrade DNA, his behavior had been getting more and more erratic. Every time Hugh had pointed it out to him, he'd brushed it off, never really showing much regret for what he'd done—until today. Now, he seemed genuinely uneasy.

Hugh had no idea what Captain Lorca had said to Paul to twist his arm into doing this after they'd found out about the disturbing amount of changes that'd taken place in his brain. Whatever it had been, it must've been weighty.

Hugh tried his best to leave all the personal baggage at the door as he entered the room, medical kit in hand. He managed that for exactly as long as it took Cadet Tilly to say, "I'm so glad he finally told you about the side effects."

The caught-in-the-act look on Paul's face made it even more obvious that she'd just revealed something he'd not meant for Hugh to hear at all.

Hugh's blood ran cold.

Side effects. Paul had said there hadn't been any. Had he been straight-up lying, then? Hugh had found it surprising that those neurological changes hadn't caused any symptoms, but damn it, he'd taken it at face value, because he knew Paul didn't lie to him. Paul might often be rude and infuriating, but they didn't keep secrets from one another. Not like this.

Was that a side effect too, Paul lying to him? Paul becoming less like himself, turning into someone Hugh didn't know anymore?

He wanted to grab Paul's shoulders and scream and yell at him, to demand him to explain what the hell he'd been thinking, tell him every detail of those side effects so he could see if he could help, but now was not the time. He couldn't. He had to stay professional.

His job required him to be good at keeping up a cool, calm and collected appearance.

"I'm sure the lieutenant has a good explanation for keeping that a secret," he said.

It was almost perfectly neutral. Tilly might even miss the sharp edge to his voice. He knew Paul wouldn't.

They needed to have a very long conversation about all of this. He just had to make sure Paul made it through each and every one of those 133 jumps first. As he started setting up his monitoring station, he tried his best not to think of how difficult that could turn out to be.  


### 1

"Commence jump sequence," Captain Lorca's voice echoed through _Discovery_.

To Hugh, it almost felt as if he were declaring Paul's death sentence.

He'd kept an eye on Paul's readings through the earlier jumps they'd done—half a dozen of them already, which apparently didn't even count towards the total. No big deal, just a few tiny jumps, he imagined Paul saying. Lying through his teeth. Hugh could see the stress they were causing. There were already several alarms going off on the biomonitor screen, and they were only just getting started.

If Hugh had known it was like this every single time they used the spore drive, he would've insisted that they stop using it altogether until they could figure out a safer way to do it.

If only he'd been paying more attention, if only he'd—but no. He wasn't going to take the blame for this. This wasn't his fault. He'd been concerned, he'd been attentive, he'd asked Paul plenty of times if everything was all right and if there was anything he could do. He'd done his best. Paul had shut him out and hid this all from him.

If only Paul had been honest with him.

Hugh wanted to be angry.

"Five—four—three—two—one," Tilly finished her countdown.

Hugh glanced at Paul, and Paul looked right back at him, his eyes huge and impossibly blue, reflecting the shimmering light of the spores floating around him. It was beautiful, _he_ was beautiful, surrounded by the essence of that groundbreaking science he had helped create—but it was the deadly beauty of flames surrounding a moth.

"I love you," Paul said.

Hugh wanted to be angry, but he couldn't.

Before he had time to reply, the drive powered up, and Paul flinched and gasped as they jumped.

It felt like someone had punched Hugh in the gut. He probably flinched as well.

One down, 132 to go.  


### 37

Hugh had known it would be bad, but it was turning out to be even worse than he'd expected. Paul's heart rate was far above safe range, his blood chemistry entirely out of whack, and his brain wave patterns resembled nothing Hugh had ever seen, either in regular human medicine or in the exobiology classes he'd taken.

They were torturing Paul, that was what was happening, there was no other way to put it. Even if he was doing this willingly, it still wasn't right—and it was stretching the truth to say that he'd volunteered. Hugh had seen how reluctant he'd been. Paul hadn't really wanted to do this. He'd known that he was putting his life at risk, and that even if he made it, there was no way of knowing how it would affect him, since no one had ever done anything even remotely like this.

Even the tardigrade, an organism adapted to life in the mycelial network, had seemed to suffer when navigating the spore drive. How was Paul, genetically modified as he might now be, supposed to do any better?

It was glaringly obvious that Paul wouldn't be able to take this much longer.

"Tilly, how many jumps do we have left?" Hugh asked, hoping against hope that it'd not be too many.

"Ninety-six more," Tilly replied. Hugh was amazed she could seem so calm with Paul suffering right in front of their eyes, but then again, she was very focused on keeping the spore drive running, hitting keys and switching spore containers faster than they'd ever needed to before.

Hugh almost wished the drive would break down, somehow; give in before Paul did. That would at least put an end to this madness.

They weren't even at the halfway mark yet.  


### 62

"Jump sixty-two," Tilly said. Even her earlier calm expression was starting to falter, Hugh thought, her eyes glimmering and her lips twitching when she glanced at the spore chamber.

It was impossible not to hear the pained grunts and whimpers that Paul let out as every new jump made him wince, his head snapping from side to side. On Hugh's screens, Paul's readings continued to deteriorate. His heart rate was so rapid and irregular that his oxygen saturation had started falling, and as for his brain—Hugh still didn't know what to make of the readings, but they were not good. They weren't even _human_.

He walked over to the drive chamber. "How are we doing, Lieutenant?" he asked. It sounded much more composed than he felt.

Paul looked at him, and yet not at him, his wide eyes unfocused, somewhere a million light years away.

"There's a clearing in the forest—that's how they go," Paul said, his voice husky. It could've been awe, or pain. Perhaps both. His expression certainly seemed awed, for a few seconds, until the next jump, when he recoiled in agony once again.

Hugh didn't know what those words meant, but they sent a chill down his spine. Clearly, Paul was losing touch with reality.

They couldn't go on like this. He'd have to stop this.

"Engineering to Bridge," Hugh called out on the comms. "We have to abort."

"We have 70 jumps left, doctor," Captain Lorca answered, not a hint of empathy in his tone.

Hugh wasn't one to oppose direct orders, he never had been. He wasn't stubborn and blunt like Paul. Paul was the one who'd stand up to anyone he disagreed with, always saying exactly what he thought. Hugh was more of a diplomat, trying to avoid conflict, choosing his words carefully and looking for common ground. This, though—he couldn't do this anymore.

"His sinoatrial node is firing at over 200 per minute. Call it off! Now!" he pleaded, his voice rising to a shout.

He'd never shouted at his captain before.

"You do whatever you have to do, you keep him alive till he finishes the jumps. Trillions of lives are at stake here," Lorca said. He wasn't shouting, but his voice was just as demanding as Hugh's, and far more menacing. Dangerous. The kind of voice that said if he disobeyed, he might find himself in the brig, or worse. "That's an order, doctor," he added, unnecessarily.

Hugh wanted to keep yelling at him, to refuse to take any part in this torture anymore, but he knew the captain wouldn't budge, when he'd made his stance so clear.

What had he even been thinking, assuming he could somehow put his foot down at this point?

He couldn't make it stop. Paul was connected to the drive, and the jump sequence would run to its end unless someone stopped it, either from the Bridge or from Engineering. Lorca wouldn't do it, and since Lorca had said they must keep going, Tilly wouldn't, either.

If Hugh walked out now, Paul would have no one looking after him.

He had no options.

He wasn't sure he'd ever felt so helpless in his life.

He swallowed his protests and pushed digoxin into Paul's IV instead, hoping that'd help his heart to hold out against the inhuman stress. It wouldn't be good for him in the long run, either, but it was the best he could come up with for now.

He'd never forgive himself if he lost Paul.

He rested his hand on the glass wall of the spore chamber.

"I love you too," he murmured.  


### 133

Hugh was waiting at the door of the spore drive chamber when the jump sequence finally came to its end, the engine powering down.

As the mechanical arms linking Paul's implants to the drive pulled away, he started slumping bonelessly towards the ground, his eyes closed. Unconscious, just like Hugh had expected him to be. It was a miracle he'd held up all the way to the end; without Hugh's interventions, he wouldn't have. It would still be touch and go.

Hugh caught him before he could hit the floor, cradling his head, and called out for an emergency transport to sickbay.

Back in his own domain, Paul safely on a biobed, Hugh easily fell back into a professional routine. He couldn't let himself think or feel before he had stabilized his patient. He shouldn't think of him as Paul. This was a patient that he needed to sort out.

He grabbed hypospray after hypospray—tri-ox, sedative, antiarrhythmic, rehydration solution—while constantly keeping an eye on the monitor. Slowly but surely, one by one, the readings shifted from "critical" to merely "abnormal," some even returning to normal range. It felt like it was taking forever, although in reality, it must've only been minutes.

He'd done what he could. Paul was getting better. With the cocktail of drugs Hugh had shot into him, he'd be sleeping for at least an hour.

The last empty hypo slipped from his trembling hand and clattered to the floor. He didn't bother to pick it up.

The immediate medical crisis was dealt with, and he could allow himself a moment.

Hugh crossed his arms, tucking his hands in his armpits to keep them still. He backed away from Paul until he collided with the next, empty biobed, and sat down heavily on it. The bedside monitor unhelpfully informed him that he was hyperventilating and slightly tachycardic.

"Shut up. Mute," he said, and the alarms quieted.

Of course he was panicking. He'd come all too close to losing the love of his life.

In all honesty, he did half feel like he should maybe inject himself with a sedative too, but obviously he couldn't; Paul might need him later.

Paul. He didn't even know if Paul was still Paul, _his_ Paul, after all this.

The changes in Paul's temporal lobe were even more prominent now. That part of the brain was critical for long-term memory. Hugh couldn't begin to guess what state of mind Paul would wake up in, if he did, and how these neurological changes would affect his behavior.

He tried not to think of the possibility that Paul might not wake up at all, that he might be stuck in some kind of a vegetative state.

Hugh would find out, soon enough. He couldn't do anything about it. Paul needed the rest; there was no way Hugh was going to force him to wakefulness with a stimulant after everything he'd already been through.

All he could do was to wait, and to be there for Paul, whether he was conscious or not.

He couldn't help feeling like he hadn't done enough so far. He should've made them stop, somehow. He should've rushed to the bridge to tell Captain Lorca to his face what he thought about this—but he couldn't have left Paul behind, not with the jumps still going on. He should've yanked out some crucial wiring to kill the spore drive—but he didn't know where those would've been, because he was no engineer—or broken the glass of the drive chamber, to let the spores escape, to make them stop—but that might have only made it worse for Paul, because there was some kind of symbiosis going on between him and the spores during the jumps that they didn't understand.

Maybe he should've put his foot down before they'd even started this, when he'd first heard of the jump sequence—but that would've meant forfeiting the mission that might end up having been their most important one yet.

He wished he had Mudd's time loop device, so he could test out all the permutations, find the one that worked. There must've been one.

A voice from the comms brutally forced him out of his introspection. "Transporter room to Sickbay. Prepare for an incoming emergency medical transport."

Hugh ran a hand over his face, trying to take deep breaths and force himself back to some semblance of calm. He was still at work. He didn't even know what had happened with the rest of the mission, and what shape Burnham and Tyler were in.

To Hugh's astonishment, the patient that was transported in turned out to be Admiral Cornwell, who'd apparently been a prisoner on the Klingon vessel. He quickly determined that the injuries to her legs were beyond the skills and resources of _Discovery_ 's medical team.

He wouldn't have admitted it, but he was secretly glad he could order her to be shipped out on an emergency shuttle to receive specialist care. Burnham and Tyler only had superficial injuries, quickly taken care of, and both of them seemed eager to get out of sickbay.

That still left Paul as the sole patient. Hugh returned to his bedside as soon as he could. He was exactly as he'd been before: unconscious, but stable.

Hugh cupped Paul's cheek, running his thumb over his cheekbone. "It would be a good time to wake up about now, Lieutenant," he said.

He leaned back, startled, when Paul's eyelids actually fluttered and his hand flew up, his fingers closing around Hugh's wrist.

"Who—Hugh?" Paul breathed.

"Paul," Hugh replied, feeling more anxious than before, not less. At least Paul recognized him. That was a good start. "Do you know where you are?"

Paul was staring at him with that slightly crazed, wide-eyed look Hugh had seen during the jumps. He didn't like it at all. "Hugh. You're _always_ there for me," Paul said reverently, like there was some hidden meaning in the phrase that only he understood.

It made Hugh feel simultaneously warm and chilled, hearing the touching words in that strange tone.

"Focus, Lieutenant," Hugh said, struggling to keep his voice neutral, holding on to his medical role, because otherwise he might just break down in tears. "Do you remember what happened?"

"I was everywhere. It was beautiful. The starlight in the leaves," Paul said, blinking rapidly, looking over Hugh's shoulder, and then at his face again. Slowly, his faraway expression shifted into a slight frown. "The jumps—did we make it?"

Hugh let out a heavy, relieved sigh, the worst of the tension flowing out of him, his shoulders sagging. Paul was still there, not too far gone into some mysterious realm where no human could follow him.

"We made it, and you made it, but only just," Hugh informed Paul. "You came that close," he held his thumb and forefinger a few millimeters apart, "to ending up in cardiac arrest, or with a stroke, or an irreversible metabolic crisis."

"But you saved me," Paul said, a hint of the earlier reverence in his voice again.

Before Hugh could stop him and force him to lie still like he should, Paul sat up and pulled him into a passionate kiss, his hand at the back of Hugh's neck. 

It was completely out of character for him and Hugh should've been concerned. They never kissed in sickbay, not like this. Paul had always been restrained about showing affection before he'd made himself a living component in the spore drive. This was the new Paul, not the old one that he knew best and had fallen in love with—but he still loved Paul, no matter which iteration.

He'd thought he might've lost this forever. He'd thought he might never kiss Paul again.

He returned the kiss in kind, sitting down on Paul's bed and wrapping an arm around his back to hold him close, reveling in the feel of Paul's lips against his, chapped from dehydration as they were.

When they sat back, letting go of the kiss but still clinging to one another, Hugh cast a quick glance at the bedside monitor and noted to his satisfaction that the readings seemed fine. Against all odds, Paul was going to be okay. Hugh needed him to stay that way, and there was only one way to be sure that he would.

He leaned his forehead against Paul's. "This has to stop."

"What, kissing? I don't want it to," Paul said. His tone might've been light, but there was a clear nervous edge to it.

"You know what I mean. The spore drive. The jumps," Hugh began, and then it all just came tumbling out, his fingers clamping around Paul's shoulder. "You can't do this anymore, Paul. It's going to kill you, or even if it doesn't, you'll change beyond what we can understand. I can't let you do that to yourself. You have to stop. It's too much. I can't lose you."

Paul leaned away from Hugh, his lips working as if he was going to protest, but then he closed his mouth again and swallowed, his expression very serious. "You're right," he said softly. "I don't want to lose you either. Nothing's worth that."

Just accepting something Hugh said in stride was awfully uncharacteristic of Paul, too. He almost never did that. It sounded sincere, though, and he did seem like himself, perhaps more so than he had all through the conversation, with that somber look on his face.

"Then you won't do any more jumps?" Hugh asked.

"I won't," Paul said, like he really meant it. "I promise. I'm done. No more jumps."

For a few precious hours afterwards, Hugh believed him. He honestly thought they'd finally seen the end of this nightmare, and that he'd never have to watch Paul wince in pain inside that glass cage amidst the swirling spores ever again. It was a good feeling.

How wrong he was.

**Author's Note:**

> This story has a tumblr post [here](http://veldeia.tumblr.com/post/169420372041/fic-133-star-trek-discovery)!


End file.
